Mixed code: lexical items of two or more languages are used within one
sentence (intra-sentencially) or across sentences (inter-sentencially).

Interlanguae: term used to describe various stages in second language
learnersï¿½ acquisition of target language. Learners achieve different levels
of proficiency of the target language, moving towards ï¿½correctï¿½ grammar of
target language.

Thank you for your quite thorough explanian. It very helful for me as lecturer in sociolinguistics but now also a student.

I've got the same impression for the use of the term 'code-switching'. When I was an undergraduate student, it was very easy for me to differenciate code-mixing from code-switching since the criterias for each are explained by my lecturer in a very simple way with very simple examples. But now, when I am a Phd Student, I often find quite confusing uses of the two terms I have just read an article in the Journal of Language in Society (published in 1990s). Let me quote a sentence from the articel : "this analysis adopts a general definition of code -switching as an alternation of two languages within the same discourse, sentence, or constituent. Since the study aims at analysing the morpho-syntax of bilingual utterances, it focuses on examples of intrasentential code-switching' . If I refer to Peter Muskyen's explanation, it seems to me the writer uses a wrong term to what he intents to study. Am I correct?
I also get the same impression when reading many discussion on this mailing-list. The name of the mailing list is code-switching@yahoogroup but often what people discuss here is what I understand as code-mixing.
Thank you,
Rina

>
> Hi
>
> Can u make distinction between Code-mixing and Code-switching?
> In my idea u should revise ur definition on mixed-code.
>
>
>
> Leoni Kotzï¿½ <leoni@...> wrote:
> I understand it like this:
>
> Mixed code: lexical items of two or more languages are used within

Sébastien, Qui mettra de l ordre dans cette affaire? The order is there already. The order is in the real data of speech. But perhaps it s not the type of

Message 4 of 12
, Jun 9, 2008

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Sébastien,

"Qui mettra de l'ordre dans cette affaire?"

The order is there already. The order is in the real data of speech. But
perhaps it's not the type of order that most code-switching scholars think
there is. I suggest we start instead from integrated linguistic and
communicative competence as the default order of speech, not from
pre-assumptions about different grammatical systems. Then, let's relate
speech signals to aspects of context (the mental construction of context,
of course). And, finally, let's try to see whether and how different
communicative (pragmatic, in a broad sense) codes organize these signals in
relation to context(s). If/When they do, we may have found CODE-switching.
If/When they don't, we may have found trivial alternations of speech
varieties, such as cette construction-ci which perhaps does not encode
quelque chose d'importante apart from the funny fact that des structures
linguistiques peuvent être combined (I'm not a native English-French mixer).

A language may be viewed as a "semantic code", fine. We still don't know
how this "encoding" works, but fine. But it turns out that once
code-switching became code-switching in the literature, it was always
conceived of as a *pragmatic* phenomenon. Therefore, it is pragmatic
contents that are encoded (somehow). Therefore bis, we have to look at
context, not at grammatical constraints. The fact that grammatical
co-occurence constraints exist for language combinations may be as trivial
as the fact that one cannot leave certain constructions incomplete, such as
*This house is made out of.

So, one should not distinguish "insertions" from "code-mixing" from
"code-switching" on the basis of the length of the language alternation. It
may be the case that a single lexical insertion DOES encode something
pragmatically meaningful. And, conversely, it may be the case that a long
stretch of alternating speech varieties does NOT encode anything
pragmatically salient. So? Should we focus on saliency, or on surface
linguistic form?

In summary, if one were to understand what code-switching is, one ought to:

1) Make sure one knows what a "code" is. What are the properties of a
code? What does a code do? Where? In discourse? In one's head? Are all
codes the same? Etc.
2) Decide whether one should call a language a "code".
3.1) If yes, proceed to
3.1.1) understand what "switching" is, and to
3.1.2) decide whether "switching" and "mixing" languages are different
procedures for combining languages. Why? On what basis?
(Hint: Since for this view language IS the code, inter-sentential
alternations should NOT be "switches", as there would be neither
grammatical constraints nor matrix-languages nor triggers within each
sentence, which is the highest-level structure possible generated by a
language. Therefore, if language is the code, the only possible switching
occurs internally, intrasententially: in "code-mixing". Strange. This is
called The Mixing-Switching Paradox).
3.2) If one should NOT call a language the code, then decide what IS the
code in communication, and then
3.2.1) try to understand what "switching codes" is, just as early scholars
understood it.
(Hint: If the code is not semantic, but pragmatic, then switching always
occurs intra-discursively, regardless of structural level. Therefore,
"code-mixing" doesn't exist. It never did. It's either code-switching, or
nothing, like in the good old times).

Oh, interlanguage: To my knowledge, an interlanguage is, as pointed out, an
"approximative system" (Selinker?, Richards?) between the source language
and the target language in L2-learning, particularly in formal
learning. It's a very specific phenomenon, which points again to one's
integrated competence. But I don't think it can be called "mixing" from the
3.1 view above, as the two supposed language-codes do not exist yet in the
speaker's mind (precisely, the learner is creating the second one: how can
you "mix" one code and half a code?). Uses of interlanguage might be
code-switching from the 3.2 view above, but not by virtue of their being
interlanguage (communicative competence barely knows what a language is).

Coda: In stable "mixed language" (="mixed code", for 3.1 proponents)
settings (creoles), same problem arises: how can you mix fragments of
codes? Logically, it should be called semi-code mixing! Anyone ready for
a new term? No, I think it's better not to call it mixing or mixed
language, but simply language. Whether or not speakers then code-switch
(view 3.2 above) is another issue.

Hi, Samsoki et al., Well, it seems to me that there are situations which don t quite fit the theoretical definitions of terms, ie, at least I don t have a clue

Message 5 of 12
, Jun 9, 2008

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Hi, Samsoki et al.,

Well, it seems to me that there are situations which don't quite fit the
theoretical definitions of terms, ie, at least I don't have a clue what to
call them. I have mentioned this case here before, but I'll repeat it: once,
when I was driving in very southern Texas, a very excited man rushed into a
store I had stopped at, carrying his son. He had just come from the
emergency room of the local hospital, where they had set his son's broken
leg. I didn't have a recorder or anything, but this was after having lived
in Mexico for over 15 years. My *very* strong impression was that the man
was alternating between English and Spanish at *every single word*, and I
think the young women he was chatting with were doing the same thing in
their responses. (This was close to 15 years ago, in Del Río, TX.) This
situation was very striking to me, because it flew in the face of any
definitions of CS that I had ever heard, or any CS that I had ever
experienced (including my own) before that in central Mexico, where we live.
In fact, it almost seemed *too* regular an alternation (though not
respecting syntactic structure, seemingly, at all) to be called 'code
mixing' or 'language mixing' (the latter an apparently unused term among
linguists, probably for good reasons, although it is frequently found in
'lay' discussions).

Sorry, all, I sent the previous response before getting to Celso s reply. One thing I should have mentioned about English-Spanish or English-French CS is that

Message 6 of 12
, Jun 9, 2008

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Sorry, all, I sent the previous response before getting to Celso's reply.
One thing I should have mentioned about English-Spanish or English-French CS
is that the case I described is at all possible just because the superficial
structures of English, on the one hand, and French or Spanish, on the other
hand, are very similar; indeed, enough so that such every-other-word CS is
feasible without driving your interlocutors totally nuts. In pairs of
languages without such similar surface structures it might be much harder to
have such a situation.

My view is that we should spend our time, as Celso suggests, examining the phenomena rather than puzzling over labelling. That said, it would be useful to have

Message 7 of 12
, Jun 10, 2008

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My view is that we should spend our time, as Celso suggests, examining the phenomena rather than puzzling over labelling. That said, it would be useful to have some clear definitions of terms, even if these are linked to specific theoretical approaches. 'Code switching' itself has been applied to such a wide range of phenomena that it is really necessary to define it clearly for the purposes of each individual study.

Regarding 'language mixing', the term 'mixed language' has been used since the 90s in contact language studies / creolistics to refer to languages like Michif and Copper Island Aleut which have lexicons and grammatical structures drawn from two identifiable languages. Although code switching may have had something to do with the formation of these languages (or may not), it is clear that these languages are not 'code switching' as the speakers are not necessarily bilingual.

However, I have recently been using the term 'written mixed language' or 'written mixed-language discourse' to refer to writing which involves two or more languages/codes. This is (a) because the term 'code switching,' although not that well-defined even for spoken language is even less well defined for written language and (b) because I would include, under this heading, types of text which involve two languages at the level of the text as a whole but which dont involve anything that resembles spoken code-switching, e.g. web sites which are composed of items in several languages.

I would be interested to hear from anyone who shares my interest in this kind of 'mixing' and am also continually on the lookout for more such sites (in any language pair). They cannot be located in general through search engines.